


split my lips

by shslduelist (joeri)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Freeform, Love/Hate, Lowercase, Minor Violence, Other, Self-Harm, soulburner says FUCK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 10:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18163796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/shslduelist
Summary: knock me out. you know what i'm about.or: the fic where takeru is kinda jealous, kinda traumatized, kindaacts out.





	split my lips

**Author's Note:**

> takes place after revolver and soulburner “duel”

on his knees, soulburner let his embers collapse in a heap all around him. the digiscape sent a pulse through his kneecaps. false agony radiated through his limbs and his heart stuttered against the rhythm of his roaring throat. the static in the air licked at his skin and his friends, his salamangreats vanished from sight.

_pitiful._

_he won’t even dignify me with a fight._

the whispers of his companions slid by unnoticed, secondary to the echo of revolvers boots against the one’s and zero’s that made up the tile beneath them. so loud. so close and yet so far. so close, _soulburner could wrap a fist around his throat right now, if he wanted to._

takeru could not but soulburner… he could do anything. he could avenge his family. he could take back the time he’d lost. he could do it.

“soulburner,” flame had said, the warm hand of his tiny body resting against his arm, and on some level soulburner could tell that this wasn’t truly himself talking. this wasn’t him thinking these violent thoughts. “we will have time for this anger, later.”

of course. takeru bit his lip, his eyes floating across the way at playmaker. of course. _of course._

there will be time later for this anger. there will be time later to feel. that’d been what revolver said to him, to let these emotions lay at bay until the time came for their battle. that was… what was best. it made sense to him, takeru had to say. there was no point in carrying on a farce, right?

except in seeing the way playmaker regarded revolver, a concerned sort of wrinkle in his eyebrow and a massage of his thumb and forefinger, anxious.

_of course._

yusaku’d been allowed to feel anger, vengeance, wrath… it was too late for him, takeru.

“when did it stop hurting?” takeru found it in him to ask one night and yusaku let it slip that he’d been wounded far longer longer than takeru’d realized.

that calm in yusaku’s pearly mints had masked a decade of loneliness and spite. it hadn’t been until the destruction of the tower and his face off with revolver that he’d gripped his coffee cup with a modicum of gentleness—not allowed his hands to squeeze finger prints into the sides of his hot dogs and allowed the door to his heart to open for others to peer through.

moments before takeru had walked into his life, yusaku’s blood had been smeared all across his bedroom walls every night he woke with a scream and a cry and a desire to see someone—something hurt like he’d been hurt.

“it got me nowhere,” yusaku said in truth. “i need others. i had to learn to let go. i had to forgive myself and others.”

“yourself?” said takeru in disbelief. “you did nothing wrong.”

“i turned my heart into an icebox,” continued yusaku, “and i closed it off to the outside and refused to accept kindness from anyone. i had to see past what had been done to me but also what i had done to myself and others.”

when yusaku leaned his head upon takeru’s shoulder, the gesture dropped deep into takeru’s stomach and made him queasy. he breathed hard.

“i struggle still, but to see revolver still so hurt…”

takeru squinted down at yusaku’s soft locks, splayed against his uniform in an intimate disarray.

“hurt?” he asked, not sure if what he saw when he looked at revolver was anything but pride and contempt.

“to still be so angry,” yusaku explained, “at the ignis, at anyone who comes in between him and his father who had done so much to make his life so hard, he must be in so much pain.”

takeru’s mouth went flat, his lips squishing together into a terribly unstable line, and he wasn’t sure he could understand the feeling he felt anymore than yusaku’s. but it tasted like bile.

they didn’t kiss each other good night.

in the vrains, soulburner’s fist collided with a wall in a way he couldn’t bring himself to do outside of it. soulburner heaved and coughed with every tear burning canyons down his cheeks and he let crushing blow after blow of his knuckles dig into the digitized building, shivering with a minor glitch in every connection.

_why? why can’t i let this anger go?_

it wasn’t fair, all things considered. yusaku had been allowed to stew until it was time. why couldn’t he?

his heart sank at the way yusaku spoke of revolver. _of course,_ he was still hurting. his father was dead. his father had done so many of those horrible things, and yet… _and yet…_

“you still hold your father in such high esteem, when he’s a monster. when he tore apart my family,” spat soulburner, his arms quivering against the wall. “you don’t know a damn thing about my pain, about _our_ pain.”

yeah, our. yusaku might have forgiven revolver, might have absolved him of all that he’d done but that didn’t mean that he had to. not until he’s able to settle the score could he let go of this rage.

“soulburner, i know that you can’t really be hurt physically here, but this isn’t an efficient use of your time,” flame said, chiding the boy for where he’d decided to inflict personal pain somehow safely.

“yeah, i know,” he said, wiping his tears with his arm scraping across his hung face. “i just… don’t know what to do.”

frowning in the way that ignis so do, with his eyes shrinking down at the edges and the lines in his face somewhat distorting, flame sat himself down against soulburner’s shoulder and craned against him just so. his warm body, minuscule body cradled the side of soulburner’s face and watched him cough up a dry sob.

“let’s go home,” flame said, patting the boy.

“hoh,” teased a voice. “i did not expect to find you here,” it ribbed.

swiveling around at light speed, soulburner spotted revolver down the alleyway, stood perfectly still like he’d most certainly been intending to be there. _what a liar._ the flickering faux fluorescence of the streetlamp above bathed him in something of an ethereal glow, and soulburner despised the edges where he did not fade in with the rest of the dark.

“you,” soulburner growled. “you don’t have a reason to wander around down here. no one but me’s around.”

revolver smiled, toothless. it disgusted soulburner for all the beauty in it, for all the beauty that he could tell playmaker saw in it. it mocked him. it tore a hole in him that he wasn’t sure he could get back.

“hm, that’s a perceptive guess. you’re right to know that no one else is around, though it wasn’t my intention to walk in on you having a delicate moment like this. feel free to carry on as though i’d seen nothing.”

_delicate?_

oh, soulburner flinched up in humiliation and curled his fingers against the digital brick, body going stiff—electrified.

“are you here just to make fun of me or are you gonna fuckin’ duel me?” sneered soulburner.

“and waste my time? no,” revolver said. “i’ll try to find you again when you’re less…”

revolver’s eyes undressed him, focused on the lines running down his face and then he said, “drippy.”

sniffling his snot back in his nose, soulburner ran and took a swing. his adrenaline spurted from out of him. he drank in the sight of revolver’s expression showing only a momentary lapse in composure before his fist made its home in the side of his cheek and his body ragdolled into the building.

it moved so nicely. flame called out to takeru but soulburner grinned and then caught revolver’s coat to yank him up to size. his helmet visor cracked, his face forming a fresh bruise, there was a deeper beauty there than anything playmaker could’ve possibly seen.

yes, penance looked far more gorgeous on kogami ryoken, soulburner decided.

the fire in his blood had far from subsided when revolver peered up at him, a look of misplaced guilt and annoyance more than anguish or anger. spitting blood into soulburner’s chest (with no ire, mind you,) revolver scowled and said, “did that make you feel better?”

“oh, you have no idea,” soulburner confessed.

“you’re not the soft, unassuming boy homura takeru looks like,” revolver said. “you’ve got a few more demons under the surface than most would think.”

“huh,” scoffed soulburner, unimpressed. “you think you know me just because i knocked you in the face. maybe you shouldn’t have provoked me.”

_lightbulb._

“you… you provoked me,” he said with the sudden knowing. “you _wanted_ me to—”

revolver shoved soulburner out of his bubble, finding purchase against the wall and steadying his wobbling shins.

“i have no reason to track you down just to let you use me as a punching bag.”

thinking of what flame had said to him, about humans not saying what they mean, soulburner clicked his tongue and found himself back in revolver’s personal space. chest to chest, soulburner cringed and said, “you don’t know how to apologize—how to make me feel better and clear your conscience. that’s what this is about.”

“oh?” revolver challenged. “you think i feel guilty for what happened to you and the other children? you don’t know who i am,” he said coolly. “i regret sending my father away. i regret rescuing you from your hellholes.”

every word made soulburner’s indigestion act up. every flame from his stomach acid licked at his esophagus and the chill radiating off of revolver’s stare, placid as an iced over pond only served to drive him further into madness.

how could yusaku… feel any sympathy for him? look him in the eyes and feel anything but… _hatred?_

“you…” 

grinding teeth, pressing forehead to helmet, soulburner locked irises and tried to find a single admirable quality about him.

“does playmaker know that? does spectre know that, that you regret saving us?”

somehow, revolver managed to look down on him even at this proximity, leaning his visor into soulburner’s nose.

“why? does that concern you? does it burn to know that they don’t hold me in contempt? that they don’t hate me?”

soulburner steps back.

“that i won't commiserate with you like you want me to…?” asked revolver, tongue almost honeyed.

and soulburner kisses him. soulburner doesn’t know why either. his fingertips dig into the back of revolvers head, leaving gentle lacerations and dragging him off of the wall and into his embrace. flame skidaddles back into the duel disk with a frantic quickness as the two tangle and collapse against the wall on the opposite end of them both. revolver, oddly enough, returns the gesture with a calculated level of attention to detail—raining his digits down the trail of soulburner’s body as his helmet’s visor slides back and allows for the skin of their face and nose to touch.

it’s hot, the contact. soulburner digs his teeth into the meat of revolver’s bottom lip and the other man grunts in turn. they break and—

revolver stands panting, a hungry hollowness in his eyes, in his _mouth_ , and contrition in the way his face turns yellow and black.

and soulburner thinks he sees it, just a little bit of what good there is to see—sees a bit of the kind of compunction that makes him want to lick his teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> tryna catch up on vrains, watched up to 83 or so and started to think about how much anger takeru harbors toward revolver. wanted to go off on that concept. wrote while listening to ok alex by blaqk audio. im half asleep and didnt beta yeehaw


End file.
